Okay, I'm sorry
@Stratagemini, but why did you do this?
I'm not trying to ruin your fun but why did you potentially give DOR-15 a hero unit? And a seemingly good one at that? Which is something that I don't think anybody really wants? You did this before by proposing a potential nemesis with an earlier omake, I know this would give the quest more of a challenge and would fill us with anticipation to fighting that challenge, but I don't feel that. I'm sorry but I just feel frustrated by this.
Unless these challenges you are proposing could be introduced further into the quest once we deal with our current problems (Kat/King Candy?/Doom) I'd be fine with that. Because we have quite a lot on our plate right now and we don't need more.
Because I wanted to.
In the short term it won't matter. We have 0 interaction with her and probably won't for the foreseeable future until she completely screws us over with an army of sentient hats. In the Long term it makes things more interesting and could tilt the scales in our favor.
I'm going to take your question seriously and not just as a complaint about the story potentially going in a direction you don't like or a complaint about things being harder than you want. So let me address that in depth.
The Hat isn't just a potential hero unit. It's also a longer term nemesis. Did you check where the hat comes from? He's a
Goof Troop Villain. He's been fought (and defeated before) by Max and Goofy. It's entirely possible (with that history) that he ends up not just as a hero unit but as a nemesis.
Nemeses are interesting mechanically in that
in defeat, they can give our heroes advantages and bonuses. They're one of the proven ways to rank up our heroes. In return for a short term challenge, we get long term gains. When it comes to Max and Goofy? That's a
really sound investment.
Now, if you're asking why I made the hat an enemy hero unit? That's a separate question. The short answer is, that's where it best fit. The longer answer is as follows:
Thematically, it made sense to give an evil possession hat to our evil possession hat king. They'll mesh well together and that increases the chances of the omake being made canon. DOR-15 is also a King that isn't explored much if at all in the current storyline, which means that the QMs have a lot of time to figure out where and how to fit him in, which increases the possibility of it being made canon. I also asked
@Arathnorn about it on Discord (which again, slightly increases the chance of it being made canon) and he said: "I can absolutely guarantee you we won't be using it elsewhere, so you have that going for you."
But, why give DOR-15 anything at all? You might ask. I outlined the benefits of nemeses above, but there are two more aspects that made it attractive.
The first is that it'll get the thread talking about DOR-15 and considering her a serious threat. We may end up finally exploring her area like we should have done ages ago.
The second has to do with how Enemy hero units work.
Enemy hero units are important because they can shape both the mechanics and the narrative of the game.
Actions that DOR-15 takes with her potential new hero unit (and more on that later) are actions that are geared towards a field that we're already better advanced in and much better prepared to advance more in and faster too. But as she accumulates magic stuff, that means that we can in theory steal or win that magic stuff from her. Furthermore, it means that Toffee and Bill can't just roll right over her with no opposition, and more familiarity with magic makes it less likely that she'll end up tricked by bill into letting him free (a tail risk, but still a risk). More enemy magic heroes means more magic generally in the quest, which I like from a mechanical standpoint because it gives us more opportunities to do occult things with our
8 occult units (Ghengis Khan, Agent Russ, Janna, Tobe, Kitsune, Grandpappy Malphy, Tom, and Marco; with more on the way if we get Star).
So the mechanical question then becomes, would you rather have DOR-15 concentrating all her efforts on a mind-controlling hat empire (and when we encounter her have that be her main note),
or would you rather that she spend some time and effort she could have been using instead on Magic using a thematically fun Hero unit that
is a potential nemesis. Mechanically, the less specialized an enemy is, the less far ahead in their field they'll be compared to us. So it's to our advantage that DOR-15 spends some time on magic.
But more to the point is the narrative pay-off. Omake that become Canon shape the narrative of the quest. As a possession hat DOR-15 is kinda interesting, but she's very linked to nebulous hat-themed goals. She's not a compelling villain in Meet The Robinsons. She's scary, sure, but the compelling villain, the one that is interesting, is the man in black, and if DOR-15 won, then it's probable that he got tossed aside as a bumbling incompetent, or ended up as a low-ability hero unit.
DOR-15 needs three things to make her interesting as a villain. She needs someone to be her mouth piece since she can't speak. She needs someone to be a minion. And she needs someone to add a sense of comedic evil and flair to her otherwise straightforward mechanical apocalypse. The hat accomplishes all three. With the hat, the DOR-15 sections of the quest will be a lot more fun to read when we get to them. That's the main pay off here. It's not necessarily about
winning the quest. It's about
enjoying the quest.
More to the point, there's no certainty that this will be made canon. As we saw from the Sparkle-land Omake, the QMs do care about difficulty and balance, and if they think that we can't handle DOR-15 with a magical hat minion, she won't get a magical hat minion (and that would be a terrifying warning sign if this gets rejected for that reason).
So yeah, there's no need to worry or be upset. I'm not doing this off the cuff. It's intentional, and planned.
EDIT: Also, I like the idea of a Legion of Hats, and am hopeful that someone interested in Space-themed hooks (I'm not naming names here, but
@Olivebirdy) will write an Omake where DOR-15 creates an interplanetary hat alliance with
these guys